Ivor Mairants writes about Masaru Kohno in his book "My Fifty Fretting
Years" published in 1980.

"In 1963 I first met Masaru Kono who has since changed the spelling of
his last name to Kohno. He then produced a whole range of excellent
classical guitars from No 2 to No 10, and when my order was delivered in
London in the autumn, Julian Bream happened to come into the shop and
asked if I had any "new machines" I showed him the Kohnos and it did
not take long for him to select one of the lower priced models (about 80
pounds), take it away, and use it in concerts. He tells me he still has
it and uses it.

The people who still may be wondering what caused the Japanese to become
guitar makers may well wonder how Masaru Kohno learnt his craft. Well,
during 1959 he went to Madrid and presented himself at No 12 Jesus y
Maria, the workshop of Arcangel Fernandez, and, through a friend who
spoke Spanish, asked if he could watch Arcangel at work, Arcangel, being
a most friendly and straightforward person, did not object, and so the
visits began. Masaru Kohno would often take Arcangel out to lunch or
dinner, and generally treated him with great friendship which Arcangel
reciprocated. Between interpreters and drawings, Arcangel's work was
carefully noted by Kohno, and after visits almost every day for about
six months, Masaru had seen enough for his purpose, and left Madrid to
establish his own workshop in Tokyo. Ivor Mairants relates the story
below without comment as it was told to him by Arcangel.

Masaru Kohno entered one of his guitars at the Liege Concours National
de Guitares which was held September 10-19 in 1967, and won the first
prize for guitar making out of 31 entrants. The chairman of the
adjudicators was my late lamented friend Ignacio Fleta (who died in
1977) and he told me that when he examined Kohno's guitar (which of
course was unlabeled at the time) he thought it was very much like his
own." (On the judge's panel were, among others, Ignacio Fleta, Robert
Bouchet, Joaquin Rodrigo, and Alirio Diaz, Noted French Luthier Daniel
Frederich won the Silver medal in the competition, a sale of a Frederich
in 2015 brought $60,000 US dollars).

"Kohno, already considered Japan's best maker, studied in Barcelona with
Fleta. Upon his return to Tokyo (1960), he buried the western stereotype
of Japanese production by not showing the slightest inclination to
merely make polite imitations of Spanish guitars. Indeed, he proceeded
to challenge them for market supremacy. He developed his own "Torres"
model, with a comfortable neck for hands smaller and less powerful than
Segovia's and a strong voice with brilliant trebles and clear bases.
It soon won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth prize for its tone. By the
late 60's Kohono's guitars had won not only a worldwide reputation for
consistent excellence at low price, but also a worldwide market for far
more than he ever could produce himself. With the assistance of his
nephew (Sakurai), he responded with a modern factory, which for the next
two decades provided the world with a Ramirez alternative in quality.
Kohno's segment of the market continued to increase until the mid-80's
when a general decline in guitar sales, after an uninterrupted 30 year
market expansion, restricted growth of both Kohno's and most other
competing guitar makers. Similar to the situation in Madrid, where many
craftsman can trace their origins to the Ramirez workshops, in Tokyo,
many of the best independent guitar makers to emerge in the 70' were
former Kohno employees."

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